In this third installment of Lizette M. Edholm's four-book series, all published in 1932, the eponymous Merriweather Girls head to Arizona, where they become entangled in the mystery surrounding Lost Canyon. Friendly Bet Baxter, earnest Shirley Williams, flighty Joy Evans, and western-girl Kit Patten, all join their new friend Enid Breckenridge ("discovered" in the second book, The Merriweather Girls on Campers' Trail), at her family's ranch. With a buried treasure, a lost Indian village, and all the excitement of outdoor activities like horseback riding, the girls soon find themselves involved in another summer adventure...

I discovered The Merriweather Girls through the fourth and final title of the series, The Merriweather Girls at Good Old Rock Hill, and enjoyed it so much that I soon sought out the other books. I generally find that vintage girls' and boys' series are better written than their contemporary equivalent, and have a charming, old-fashioned feel to them. They also, unfortunately, frequently contain anachronistic social views, whether of gender, race or class.

I had been congratulating myself on discovering Edholm's books, which seemed to have all the charm and little of the aggravation, when I came to The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure, and was forced to revise my opinion. This entry in the series felt very different to me, both in writing quality and in content. While reading in this genre certainly requires some suspension of disbelief - the characters tend to be rather two-dimensional and the plot resolutions a little too pat - this particular novel had such glaring continuity errors that I wonder how it got past an editor. At the end of one chapter, the girls have just picked up a little old professor in their car. At the opening of the next, he is standing by the road, waiting for them to stop!

Even more disturbing are the frequent instances of racism, which I might have expected in a book of this era, had they not been (blessedly) absent in the other three Merriweather Girls titles. The "Mexicans" are all either stupid or villainous - in need of the girls' help, or easily outwitted by them. In one scene, Bet steps in and saves a young Mexican boy who is on fire, while his mother and the other elders of the village stand by "helplessly" wringing their hands. I was strongly reminded of a similar passage in Helen Randolph's The Mystery of Carlitos (another vintage girls' series book from this era), and that is NO compliment.

When Joy finds a young "Mexican" cowboy handsome, Kit informs her: "We don't make friends with the Mexican laborers," whom she refers to as "greasers" (119) later on in the book. Good enough to do the work, they nevertheless need constant supervision: "A Mexican miner has to have someone to keep him on the job" (181), and are not particularly difficult to fool, even when armed.

The portrait painted of the Indians is just as unflattering, despite Edholm's apparent belief that she had created a sympathetic character in Kit, who gets angry when she hears someone making the old "the only good Indian is a dead Indian" comment. I winced every time I saw the word "squaw," or read Edholm's notion of Indian "speech." Old Mary makes "grunts of satisfaction" as she looks at Kit's present, and "scurries" off to show her husband, who understands white(!) ways better, and offers his thanks. But even "Indian Joe" speaks in the stilted dialogue assigned to Native Americans in the literature of the time, as do the white characters themselves, when trying to communicate with the Indians.

Most astonishing of all is the "legend" of Lost Canyon, which tells of a terrible massacre of white settlers by the local Indians. Apparently, the chief's daughter was so upset by the "villainy" of her own people, that she cursed them, causing them to die out. Yep - it's all that Indian guilt at killing those helpless settlers...

Needless to say, my final experience with the "Merriweather Girls" was a real disappointment - all the more so since I had enjoyed the other three stories. I suppose I should have been expecting this, when I learned that it was set in the western United States... *Sigh* ( )